Archives for January 2017

South Carolina lawmakers will likely try to borrow millions of dollars through revenue bonds to pay for repairs and maintenance projects at state-owned buildings and facilities.

The State newspaper reports $446 million included in the state budget that will take effect July 1 will probably go to prop up the state’s underfunded pension system, for damage costs caused by Hurricane Matthew and state services which includes K-12 public education.

According to the newspaper, some South Carolina lawmakers are open to the idea of borrowing money to pay for renovations and other projects needed at over 5,000 state-owned buildings.

According to the South Carolina Treasurer’s Office the state has the ability to borrow about $2 billion.

The Department of Administration estimates that on top of deferred maintenance costs, the state will have $799.2 million in building costs over the next three decades.

Building projects that colleges and technical schools want from the state in next year’s budget account for the bulk of about $1 billion in requested money for them.

A Sumter County voting official has been arrested after state investigators accused her of using her position to steer voters into choosing a particular candidate in last year’s primary elections.

64-year-old Sara Benenhaley was charged with willful neglect or corrupt conduct by an election officer on Monday. State Law Enforcement Division warrants accuse her of using her position “to instruct or coerce voters to vote for a particular candidate during the June 14 primary and the runoff two weeks later.

Benenhaley could face up to three years in prison and/or a maximum $500 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor.

The warrants do not state which party’s primary or candidates Benenhaley was accused of influencing. The races would have been local, however, as South Carolina’s presidential primaries were much earlier in the year. The warrant does not go into specifics of how Benenhaley is accused of influencing voters.

South Carolina Radio Network was not able to immediately reach the Sumter County Registration and Election Commission for comment.

Should senators approve U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney to a key White House budget post next month, one of South Carolina’s most recognizable Democratic names would not run for his open House seat.

State Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, posted on Facebook Tuesday that he had considered suggestions to run for the Fifth District seat, but ultimately decided he should stay in his current position.

“I have decided to stay in the South Carolina State Senate and continue working hard for my communities,” the post stated. “South Carolina’s government may be dysfunctional and incompetent after the last 14 years, but being able to drive home at night after fighting the good fight is an amenity I could not give up.” [Read more…]

Frustration and anger has grown in the United States and abroad in response to the President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration, which banned people from seven countries that are predominately Muslim and either in a state of civil war or hostile to American interests.

Donald Trump (File)

University of South Carolina Rule of Law Collaborative Deputy Director Hamid Khan told South Carolina Radio Network that Trump is trying to do what other presidents have done, but he may be doing it differently. “He seeks to eliminate radical Islamic terror. And this is not all together dissimilar from the Bush administration or the Obama administration because of course terrorism is of great concern to the American people,” said Khan.

Khan said that all the attention given to the situation could put the U.S. in a negative light on the international stage. “Trying to persuade countries to adopt our policies when we in this type situation find ourselves at odds with so many other countries. That can be as varied as the British prime minster to much of the Muslim world” Khan said.

“Many of the individuals who have been directly affected are those who were already permitted to board planes on their way and in transit to the United States and then detained by U.S. immigration officials upon their arrival,” Khan said.

The executive order still makes life uncertain for other Muslims abroad who had assisted the American military and whose hopes for entry to the U.S. have dimmed.

There were protests over the weekend at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport after a former Clemson doctoral student from Iran was pulled off her plane in Saudi Arabia while trying to return to Greenville. Nazanin Zinouri was blocked from arriving in the United States because she is from Iran, despite being in the United States a legal resident with a “green card” the past seven years. Part of Zinouri’s difficulty is that the White House says green-card holders will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, while the Department of Homeland Security has said they are free to travel as normal.

USC’s Rule of Law Collaborative (ROLC) was founded in 2010 and is committed to the development of rule of law as a discipline, the advancement of theoretical and research-based applications in the field, and the refinement of policies relating to rule of law development. ROLC’s staff has extensive on-the-ground experience implementing a wide variety of rule of law activities around the world in partnership with local and international NGOs, as well as with government and multilateral donors.

President Donald Trump carried the Palmetto State very easily in the election, but it could be a state hit by a trade war with Mexico and Canada if the president renegotiates the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The administration is purposing a 20 percent tax on Mexican goods entering the United States, which administration officials say is just one option.

A forklift loads a truck at the Inland Port terminal in Greer (Image: SC Ports Authority)

The Greenville News reports that a tax on imports from Mexico and Canada would cause tariffs on American goods shipped to those countries in retaliation. That would damage South Carolina’s exports to Mexico and Canada, which has expanded 83 percent in the last decade to nearly $6.2 billion in 2015, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

That makes South Carolina one of the states most vulnerable to a trade war because of its dependence on international trade. South Carolina has seen its exports flourish after a manufacturing sector recovery across the state the past few years. A new report from CNBC listed South Carolina as among the top 10 states that would be negatively impacted by a North American trade war.

According to the report, South Carolina business leaders said that they are hoping that the president will negotiate better deals for the state’s export business.

Clemson University’s economics department interim chair Scott Baier said that, if the U.S. pulls out of NAFTA, it would likely bring some manufacturing jobs back to the country in the beginning, but would cost the American economy down the road and would have little or no impact on jobs long-term.

Site plan for the Jasper Ocean Terminal (Image: Army Corps of Engineers)

A meeting Tuesday night will discuss a proposed cargo terminal planned along the Savannah River in Jasper County.

The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking community feedback as it prepares to begin an environmental impact study for the future Jasper Ocean Terminal. The $4.5 billion, 1,500-acre port is tentatively scheduled to open in 2025.

Tuesday’s 5:30 p.m. scoping meeting at Hardeeville Elementary School will be part of the agency’s public comment process. Interested parties will also be able to submit additional comments for 30 days. The Corps of Engineers will then set the study’s parameters before a third-party contractor begins work on the $15 million study itself. [Read more…]

Model of the planned Greener statue, honoring the University of South Carolina’s first black faculty member

On what would have been his 173rd birthday, the University of South Carolina unveiled a rendition of a planned statue honoring the school’s first black professor.

The school plans to honor Richard T. Greener with a statue outside its Thomas Cooper Library. On Monday, USC celebrated a historical figure who thwarted the prevailing racial politics of the Reconstruction era with cake and birthday wishes.

Greener arrived in South Carolina when he was 29 years old, as the first black student to earn a degree from Harvard. When he accepted the professorship at USC, Greener taught moral philosophy and helped run the Carolinana Library. While teaching, Greener also took law classes and became the law school’s first back graduate.

But during Greener’s many ‘firsts’ in teaching at USC from 1873-1877, white segregationists came back into power in South Carolina and told Greener to leave his post as faculty. USC became an all-white school in 1880 and did not desegregate again until 1963. [Read more…]